WONDERS OF HOW ANIMALS LEARN

KIRKUS REVIEW

A decade after Freedman and Morriss so admirably explained How Animals Learn, it might be time for another look--but alas, Berrill offers only a slapdash scrapbook that adds nothing and omits much (while irritatingly intruding behavioral dicta and comparing animals not to humans in general but to ""you""). Young readers don't need another report on the Harlow monkey-mother experiments, especially one that contradicts itself in the space of a paragraph. And they already have access to more enlightening, separate treatments of bird song, animal play, bee dancing, and chimpanzee language studies; Berrill explores the meaning of none of these topics, and her commentary is on the order of expressions of amazement. Even her factual details are wrong: Lorenz imprinted geese, not ducks; and the Yerkes language was named for the lab, not the man who worked it out. Trivial considerations perhaps, but indicative of the level of research.

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